A Fogey's Lament

Reflections On The Inevitability Of Change In The Human Condition ...

Or...

Thoughts On Stuff That Ain't Like It Used To Be, To Wit:



   
-- Bars and barber shops.
     I had a soft spot for these. They were havens of a sort, where strangers could josh each other and marvel at the failure of the larger world to align itself with principles radiantly apparent to the patrons of said bars or barbershops.
     The barbers were craftsmen. They knew every bump and curve of every head. They knew the eccentricities of every head's owner.  A good bar tender was said to be the next thing to a priest, and I guess that was about right. But my favorites were the regulars on the customer side of the bar.  The ones who always sat in the same places and always had the same agenda.  If you wanted conversation, you could talk sports with this one or politics with that one. If you wanted to be left alone, you could sit next to the one who wouldn't speak to you if the earth cracked open.
     I don't go to bars much any more. There seems to be a rule that the walls must be lined with television screens. The barkeep can be seen only in glimpses between the tap handles for 50 different kinds of beer. I've tried. I really have.   But I just can't get comfortable with seeing the walls move in my peripheral vision. And who knew that one day the question What'll you have? would require an elaborate decision?
     Barbershops also have become alien territory.  The other day I saw one where the barbers were costumed as sports referees. Being unsure what this was meant to imply about tonsorial skill, I passed on by.  Methods have changed as well. Barbers may simply attach an appliance to electric clippers and apply technique they can practice by mowing their lawns. Perhaps this explains why I see young men wearing hair styles that remind me of cow pies.
     Pity.



-- Banks.
     I understand that business imperatives change.  But I do wish that going to the bank didn't make me feel quite so much like a gazelle visiting a pride of lions. The sales pitches are dogged in behalf of services I clearly don't want, because I still don't have them despite the fact that they are pushed on me every time I darken the door.
     My bankers are particularly ardent about on-line banking. The teller always asks me if I do it.  I always explain that I prefer not to.
     Here, the teller's eyebrows soar. I am convinced that they emphasize this tactic at teller school.  In tones one might use to explain that the earth is not flat, the teller assures me that on-line banking is ever so convenient, and absolutely safe and secure. I forbear to say that I have never needed to check my balance at 3 a.m., and that believing in foolproof technology is the modern equivalent of believing in unicorns. I simply explain -- again -- that I am comfortable as I am.
     Eventually the teller relents and permits me to approach my own money.  I always leave with a feeling that I've disappointed my bank.  Time was, my bank would have worried about disappointing me. I liked it that way.



-- Language.
     With many people, I'm like, you know, totes aggro at the slovenly pidgin that passes for spoken English. Even beyond this I have a special peeve. I hate the use of acronyms in lieu of plain speech.
      Perhaps it began with government agencies. Goodness knows they are vigorous exemplars -- and can have good reason to cloak their performance in a bit of camouflage.  But when did it become a TROUT ( a Thing for the Rest Of Us Too)?
       Now, I suppose we could cut a little slack for Mothers Against Drunk Driving and Drug Abuse Resistance Education. The causes are worthy, and the acronyms do make marginally useful sense. (In some quarters, D.A.R.E. stands for Dykes Against Racism Everywhere, but perhaps we can agree that this is not general usage.)
      Others, in numbers that Google lists in the thousands, are just too cute. Could a bunch of Midwesterners in the beef business be a trade association of some plain sort? Nope. They had to be Cattlemen Of Wisconsin.
     And speaking of "nope," that word's been hijacked by the National Optimum Population Effort. Just say NOPE!
     Peace? That's People Expressing A Concern for Everyone.
     And so on.
     I think the practice should be outlawed. But given the state of things, not before I have formed the founding chapter of Citizens Raging Against Politicians.


-- Instructions And Programming, Part One
     A few years back, I was programming a new gadget. The instructions told me that if I wanted to enable a certain feature, I should go to line six on page eight.  But there was no line six on page eight. There was no line six remotely near page eight.  I learned to do without that certain feature and, consequently, soon learned to do without the gadget.
     Little did I know this was a dark omen for a coming time when everything would have to be programmed. If I'm told someday soon that I must program my trousers, I won't be terribly surprised. And the trouble is,  the instructions for our labor-saving devices may be, in my experience,  labor-creating devices. They may be opaque.  They may be rendered in pictographs too small to make out.
      They may be simply dead wrong.  Lights may not blink as they are supposed to. Beeps may refuse to beep at the prescribed time.  Outright guesswork can be more useful and considerably less stressful.
     As one seasoned by time, I have learned to manage the frustration of being buffaloed by electro-mechanical devices.  I have not learned to understand why major companies hire writers who think that grammar,  syntax and accuracy are exotic disciplines.




--Instructions And Programming, Part Two
     I have a hankering. It won't go away.
     I long for an opportunity to tell the people who program those telephone trees:  If I knew my party's extension I would have dialed it to begin with.


   
   
   
   
   

Of Sowing and Reaping

     The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

     Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.
                                                                                       Edmund Burke


   
     When I was a youngster, one of my grandmothers had a certain way of praising me to others. She would say, He's going to be the governor of North Carolina.  In her final years, when she lived in a dream world, she would say that I actually was the governor of North Carolina.  I tried to look gubernatorial in her presence. I couldn't bear any notion of disappointing her.
     My grandparents were of the yeoman class who gave this state much of its character.  These folks were resourceful in wanting to transcend the worst of Southern history and the systemic poverty of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.  City people supported the development of farm-to-market roads for the sake of all.  Country people supported a distinguished state university, seeing in it a means for everyone's children to choose a better life. State leaders developed programs to open doors for the poor.
      In these and other undertakings North Carolinians  nourished a political ethic that was, by and large, pragmatic and goal-oriented.  At key junctures they displayed a shrewd skepticism of labels and ideology.    They didn't write the state's official motto, but they could have. It is, "Esse Quam Videri."  --   "To be rather than to seem." They valued leadership. They valued character.  My grandmother thought the governor's office should be a pinnacle of both.
      I have all this in mind because the leadership of my state has fallen into the hands of low people.  One recent development highlights this, for us and for the nation. We now have a law that fosters discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
     This legalized bigotry is a vividly mean-spirited piece of work.  Until the last minute our legislature handled it behind a cloak of secrecy.  Our governor signed it literally in the dark of night.  They knew that it couldn't stand scrutiny, and it has in fact created a groundswell of disgust.
     If this episode is especially dramatic, it is only one in a shabby pattern.  Connivance and dereliction have put our state government in the control of people who give the back of their hand to the long-manifest values of the broader electorate.  Our legislature has gone to the outskirts of the Republican right, in campaigns heavily underwritten by a wealthy extremist. Along for the well financed ride was the fellow who became our rookie governor, a pliable wannabe so covetous of office that he has disgraced himself as a public official and as a man.
     And where were the rest of us? Asleep at the switch, alas. Complacent about developments in gerrymandered districts where the real elections take place in low-turnout primaries controlled by small minorities of voters.  Complacent when the Democratic Party bothered to offer only a cipher as alternative to the bag man's guy for governor. Complacent about the aims of a cohesive faction zealously contemptuous of the values -- and the rights -- of others.
     And so my state must live for a time with the hard lesson that neglect is a stealthy predator on democracy. The nation may be flirting with the same lesson. The Republican Party's presidential nominating process is in the grip of two genuinely bad men who advance by inflaming an emotional minority.  Much lament has been focused on their demagoguery. Less has been focused on the statistic for which the United States is notorious among world democracies: Eighty percent of the people eligible to vote in the Republican primaries have not bothered.  The zealous few have so far controlled the agenda and damaged our country.
     In North Carolina, the zealous few have given us leaders who betray their sworn obligation to serve the better interests of all the people. They have tried to deter voting. They have tampered with the university. The list goes on, and now includes a comprehensive affront to common decency.
     Many of us have watched this vandalism with a mixture of outrage and heartache.  Genuine citizenship is hard work. Generations of ordinary North Carolinians believed in it and labored at it. They produced government that was clean and diligent. Now, in just a few years, their achievement has been sneered away. It is an epic shame.